I've played a number of one day classics as CSC and Discovery and i've noticed that a number of the AI riders seem to be able to literally ride away from me. I've seen Hoste and Flecha do this to me agaisnt the likes of O'Grady, Cancellara and Hincapie etc so the difference in stats is not that create.
I've put this down mainly to my guys not being at peak fitness (early classics and all) but i wondered two things:
1. Has anyone else had experience of this either for you or against??
2. What are peoples tactics when you get into that final group with the real contenders for the race?
Yeah i just played a season with Predictor so i had Leif Hoste and Bjorn Leukmens who are pretty dam good at the classics.
Once i get into the final group i usually wait till about 15-10km to go with Leif Hoste and than put him on 99 and attack. A few guys usually come with you but if your then put him on 99 still and effort cursor he usually can just rid away from them and win it by a fair way.
With Leukmans i usually attack as its coming to the last mountain of the day if it is within about 30km of the finish and do the same thing.
The problem is that when you play on "hard", the AI simply has a lot more blue bar to attack from. I played L-B-L with Bettini - as a single race, and counter-attacked Valverde and Boogerd at the PERFECT time. But as they kept on attacking, Bettini had nothing left, Rebellin even passed him.
I fell down to Nocentini and Ricco and went 4th, but still. I think it's a shame that it's made that way, because the same pattern is there for the mountains.
You really need to be above the rest in terms of shape - and at the greater events, TdF a.s.o., it's impossible to be above top shape. If you catch my drift.
